Igor Ivanov - Grandmaster and pianist

1/3/2006 – In November Igor Ivanov, born in 1947, passed away. He was a very strong chess player, one who had beaten the reigning World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 1979. But his mother wished him to be a concert pianist. We found a splendid article on Igor on the One Good Move website, with some beautiful piano music by Chopin. A moving tribute to the maestro.

In November we
reported on the passing of this outstanding figure in American chess. At
the time there was a short autobiographical note on the web site One
Good Move. To our great pleasure we see that someone named Norm has posted
a much longer article on the site, and also provided a sound file of Igor at
the piano. Pure delight to hear. We bring you an excerpt of the new article,
all relavent links and an article from ChessBase Magazine 109 – all as
a farewell tribute to Igor Ivanov.

Igor Ivanov 1947 - 2005

Posted by Norm on One Good Move

There are thousands of chess-players around the world who knew Igor Ivanov.
They opened their homes and their hearts to his brilliant mind, to his kind
soul, to his hearty laugh, and to his friendship. He was always respectful of
others, and I never heard him utter an unkind word to anyone. He was a Grandmaster
while most the the rest of us were patzers, but he treated us as equals. His
respect for us didn't dim when we played chess with him. We almost always lost,
but we always left the board feeling good. He brought out the best in everyone.
It wasn't that he didn't have strong opinions he did. I often disagreed with
him about politics, but it was never personal, and we agreed on all the important
things in life, a love of music, of literature, of chess, and the value of good
friends.

I remember that day in March when he called and told me he had cancer, and
how it was inoperable. We both knew that he didn't have long, but his spirits
were high. I asked him if he'd heard the Monty Python song, "Always Look
on The Bright Side of Life." He hadn't but was anxious to hear it. I sent
him a copy and a few days later he was back on the phone. He didn't start with
his usual hi Norm it's Igor instead he said "I love that part where they
say You come into life with nothing and you leave with nothing, what have you
lost nothing." and then that infectious laugh of his. That is how I’ll
remember Igor laughing and embracing life while facing death. Igor is gone now,
but our memories of him remain.

Here are a few of mine, but first a few pictures of Igor, the background music
is Chopin’s Fantaisie-impromptu in C sharp minor, a piece I heard Igor
play many times.

Grandmaster Igor Ivanov

By John Donaldson

Igor
Ivanov was born in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) on January 8, 1947. At
age five his mother taught him to play chess and it was not long before he could
beat her. Igor's first book was one on chess and even at a very young age he
could remember his games.

By age eight Igor was an accomplished player, attending the chess palace daily
where he was singled out as one of the most promising young talents, but this
potential was to lay dormant for some time. Igor's mother wished him to be a
concert pianist and asked her son to emphasize his musical abilities rather
than play chess.

It was only when she died when he was 14 and left an orphan that he started
to play again. His music talent (piano and cello) earned him special privileges
and his own room in the orphanage but it was chess that he loved more. At 18
he matriculated at the University of Leningrad, but soon gave up the study of
mathematics to pursue a career as a chess professional.

Igor Ivanov playing in the Soviet Union in the 1970s

Initially Igor had a job as the manager of an army chess club in Leningrad.
The work was fine but did not allow him much time to play so when he was offered
a position as a professional player in Tajikistan he quickly accepted. Igor
stayed there only a year before moving to Uzbekistan where he played first board
for the republic in the annual Spartakiad. It was in such a competition that
he first came to the attention of the entire chess world when he beat reigning
World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 1979.

Malevinsky-Sturua in the foreground; Ivanov playing in the background

Soviet players had become familiar with Igor's name years earlier, but particularly
in 1978 and 1979. Playing throughout the Soviet empire Igor not only won several
important competitions but did it in such a dominating fashion that he couldn't
help but be noticed: 1st in the Zaitzev Memorial in Vladivostock in 1978, 1st
at Yaroslavl 1979 and again first at the Tashli Tailiev Memorial in Ashkhabad
at the end of 1979. His score in the latter was 12 from 13 (!), three points
ahead of second place finisher Kakageldyev. Regrettably few of the games from
these events are preserved. You can find some here and there in Shakhmaty Bulletin,
Shakhmaty Riga, Shakhmaty v SSR and lesser known Soviet chess journals, but
never complete bulletins for the events, the game scores of which were likely
lost long ago. Igor was never a good record keeper so the games from Vladivostock
and the 1978 USSR Semi-final in Daugavpils (=1st with Kasparov) in the accompanying
game file give just a taste of a time where Igor describes his play as "fearless
with no sense of safety."

The victory over Karpov earned Igor his first trip abroad to play in the Capablanca
Memorial in Cuba in 1980. The return trip home to the Soviet Union made a refueling
stop in Ganders, Newfoundland, where Igor asked for and was granted political
asylum by the Canadian government. This move had, as one might expect, profound
changes on Igor's life. An increase in personal freedom was balanced by a lack
of economic security. As a professional player in the Soviet Union Igor did
quite well, but such an occupation barely existed in North America in 1980,
especially in Canada. Igor also had to adapt as a chess player. Playing in Swiss
System events over a weekend with two or three games a day is not quite the
same thing as a 16 player round robin that lasts three weeks. Nor is having
to score almost 100 percent to win a prize.

Igor
settled in Montreal and quickly picked up French and English. He and the rapidly
improving Kevin Spraggett would dominate Canadian chess over much of the next
decade. Igor won the Closed Championship of his newly adopted country four times
in five tries from 1981 to 1987. In 1985 he tied for first place in both Canadian
Open and Canadian Closed Chess Championships at Edmonton, Alberta, while playing
his games simultaneously! Igor played for Canada in the 1984 and 1988 Olympiads
and represented the nation in the 1982 Interzonal in Toluca, Mexico. This event
was to prove to be a heartbreaker for Igor, though he didn't know it at the
time. Scoring 7.5 from 13 he was fourth on tiebreak, but the GM norm - good
for the title in an Interzonal - was 7.8. Certainly the way Igor was playing
he probably thought the title was just around the corner, but it would be 24
years before he would become a GM. One can't help but wonder how that title
might have made his life easier with more invitations and better conditions.

Canada is a very nice country, and one that has produced some good chess players
(Yanofsky, Suttles, Biyiasas, Spraggett, Lesiege, Charbonneau and Bluvstein)
but it is not a promising place to be a professional. It is no accident that
former Candidate Kevin Spraggett lives in Europe nor that Igor moved to the
United States. There is no pot of gold for professional chess players in the
USA but if you are willing to travel there is always someplace holding an event
with a first prize of $300 on up. Chess players from around the world are familiar
with the World and National Opens, massive events often with over 1000 players
participating and five figures for first place. Such tournaments are few and
far between and the competition is such that no one can be certain to win. To
survive as a professional in North America on a diet of just playing requires
one find smaller events where the chances of winning are highly likely. Igor
hit this trail in earnest in the 1980s and by 1997 he had won 9 of the US Chess
Federation's Grand Prix series. This yearly competition, where points are awarded
each event on the basis of the amount of prize money available ($300 first might
equal six points, saw Igor reach close to 500 points in a single year. This
does not equal many weekends off! At the end of the year Igor would often have
to make long journeys to play in small events to secure his victory in the Grand
Prix. One time he traveled back and forth to Atlanta from Los Angeles (roundtrip
close to 6,000 miles or 10,000 kilometers) in less than a week by bus!

Igor started to play less frequently in the late 1990s turning his attention
to coaching. He had worked in the past as a second for Viktor Kortschnoj in
the 1981 World Championship, but he was most successful in his job at the Shelby
School in Arizona, where he coached them to two national championships. More
recently Igor relocated first to Central and then St. George, Utah. He is the
Grandmaster-in-Residence (he got the GM title in 2005 for norms that he made
in the early 1990s and was unaware of) at the St. George Chess School and lives
in the mountains of southern Utah with his wife Elizabeth, a retired teacher.
He teaches chess, runs a chess camp every summer, gives piano recitals at the
St. George Tabernacle, takes care of Petruska and Sasha (two very spoiled cats)
and is an avid gardener and reader. Igor is much liked by the many chess players
that appreciate his excellent sense of humor, kindness towards animals and love
of life. The author of this piece is confident that Igor and his games will
be remembered for a long time.

A note on Igor's games. I have made a conscious decision not to select games
of Igor's that are already in ChessBase, exceptions being limited to Vladivostock
1978 and Daugavpils 1978, games where I was able to locate annotations, and
some recent US Championship games that were too good to pass up. Many of the
games in this are from weekend tournaments in the United States played in less
than optimal conditions, but Igor's creativity still shines through. I used
several American magazine's to find them including Player's Chess News, Chess
Life, Inside Chess as well as various state publications. I would love to hear
from readers who have games played by Igor that are not in Mega2005. They can
contact me at imwjd(at)aol(dot)com.

See also

11/27/2005 – A week ago the chess world was saddened by the passing of GM Igor Ivanov, who
will not be forgotten by the people who knew him. In order to make sure his
chess will also be remembered Dennis Monokroussos, in his Monday night Playchess
lecture, shows us one of Ivanov's immortal games. A tribute to this outstanding figure in American chess.Discuss

11/25/2005 – Chess books are often edifying and instructive, but more often they are franky boring. Here is one that breaks with the tradition. John Nunn's latest work looks back at a remarkable career of exciting chess, and then takes on some controversial subjects: the FIDE time limit, knockout world championships and drug-testing in chess. Highly recommended.Discuss

Discuss

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